"Always try to find people who are smarter than you and learn from them."
Evan Zhao is CEO/Co-founder of Revela, Inc. He is a synthetic biologist expert who has a Ph.D. from Princeton, a B.S. from Caltech, and multiple high-impact lead author scientific publications in journals such as Nature, Nature Chemical Biology, and Nature Biotechnology. Evan was a Schmidt Science Fellow in the lab of James Collins working on next-generation mammalian cell synthetic biology. Evan recently started Revela to bring the most advanced biotechnology to consumer goods. They have raised an oversubscribed Seed round from established ventured capitalists (yet to be announced).
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Table of Contents
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Evan Zhao: Sure! I’ve always been a science geek and went to school for Chemical Engineering. Towards the end of undergrad, I realized that I wanted to work on curing diseases and everyone told me that I needed a Ph.D. for that so I went and got a Ph.D. After my Ph.D., I did finally get the chance to work on developing next-generation drugs, but COVID hit and shut down the entire Harvard system for a couple of months. In those months, my colleagues and I asked ourselves how did this happen? We concluded that science had a public relations problem partially because every consumer wellness brand claimed that they had super innovative “science” without any real research to back them up. So the customers and general public would buy their stuff and lose faith in what science has to offer. This was CRAZY to us! Science actually can deliver real solutions and these brands were more concerned with spending money on marketing than providing real solutions. We wanted to change that.
Was there somebody in your life that inspired you to take that specific journey with your business?
Evan Zhao: Definitely! I got a fellowship called the Schmidt Science Fellowship which was started by Eric Schmidt (former CEO of Google) in collaboration with the Rhodes Trust. In my interview, Patrick Pichette, just the coolest dude I’ve ever talked with, asked me “why are you trying to do this in academia? Why not do this in the industry?” I didn’t have a great answer! I fortunately still got the fellowship but I reached out to Patrick afterward to ask him for advice on what I should be doing. As the ideas for Revela developed, Patrick was also actively encouraging me to think about potential opportunities to make a big impact on the world. When we started the company, he was the first person to put in money and has been incredibly supportive.
What are the most common mistakes you see entrepreneurs make and what would you suggest they do?
Evan Zhao: Yeah! It’s super hard to create a successful company. There’s a lot of fierce competition. It’s easy to want to be relaxed and be supportive almost to a fault. The truth is a leader has to find a balance between being supportive and having super high standards. Otherwise, the company isn’t going to make it very far.
Resilience is critical in critical times like the ones we are going through now. How would you define resilience?
Evan Zhao: Resilience to me is finding a way to fight for what you want to see happen. I know people admire the big CEOs or leaders of the industry, but when I think of resilience I think of the grandmothers I saw in China collecting plastic bottles to pay for their grandchildren’s educations. It’s believing that the world is going to get better and you just need to keep your head up high.
In your opinion, what makes your company stand out from the competition?
Evan Zhao: Oh this one’s easy. We do a lot of scientific research and have defensibility! We have multiple patents filed after just a year of existence and we’re discovering completely new ingredients. Very very few companies actively do this. We spend more than half of our money on research and development. That’s more than 5x more allocation than all of our competitors.
Delegating is part of being a great leader, but what have you found helpful to get your managers to become valiant leaders as well?
Evan Zhao: Great question! We want everyone that works with us to be highly motivated in what they do. One key thing that we do is assign every person at least one thing that they completely own. They make decisions and sometimes check in with their managers but mostly it’s their responsibility. This way they are properly motivated to learn and improve on those tasks.
What have you learned about personal branding that you wish you had known earlier in your career?
Evan Zhao: Just how important it is! Everything about running a business is a personal brand. How do people perceive you and how do people talk about you behind your back? I was a very results-driven person earlier in my career and recently I’ve been trying to make sure I branch out and start to speak more openly about struggles and successes.
How would you define “leadership”?
Evan Zhao: To me being a leader is responsibility and humility. Good leaders will take responsibility when things aren’t working and not just blame others. They also try to figure out what went wrong and tackle those issues from the ground up. The other thing is admitting when you don’t know something and actively seeking out solutions or help. That’s the essence of leadership is trying to put the pieces together.
What advice would you give to our younger readers that want to become entrepreneurs?
Evan Zhao: Start early! Build your connections now and just be friends with great people. These will be invaluable in your journey. Always try to find people who are smarter than you and learn from them.
What’s your favorite “life lesson” quote and how has it affected your life?
Evan Zhao: I’m trying to live my life by the 50-year-old framework. Would 50-year-old you be proud of yourself? This has drastically changed all of my decisions and I encourage every young person to think like this!
Mike Weiss, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Evan Zhao for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Evan Zhao or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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